By Olawale Rasheed
Recent attacks on security personnel by the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) may have worsened Nigeria’s rating on the handling of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea even as a United Nations report has compared pirate attacks off Nigerian coast as close to that of Somali pirates.
The attacks which claimed the lives of senior military and police personnel came few days after a group of pirates hijacked a crew of Russian ship in the Gulf of Guinea even as MEND has directly threatened to attack any ship that refuses to allow its men to board it.
The two incidents came at a bad time for the Nigerian Navy which in the last one week had been conducting a nine-nation naval exercise in the Gulf of Guinea involving American, European and several African nations.
The Gulf of Guinea, a rich oil region, has Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola, Equtorial Guinea, Benin, Togo and others as contiguous nations.
Maritime security reports had noted that in terms of the danger of piracy, Nigeria is on the second place in the world after Somalia with a total of fifty-eight pirate attacks on ships off Nigeria’s coast in 2011.
“The real problem is the powerful transnational mafia financing the pirate network and facilitating their nefarious activities. This mafia passes on authoritative information such as names of ships, the course they will take, value of cargo and extent of insurance cover to local criminal groups,” a security briefing report recently noted.
While MEND has not been directly linked with piracy operations, its recent warning to ships off Nigerian coast is said to have confirmed earlier reports of links between pirate gangs and some segments of Niger Delta militants.
International oil companies in Nigerian had recently alerted the nation to the high rate of crude oil theft in the Niger Delta with one of the company declaring that Nigeria is losing as much as 150,000 barrels of crude oil on daily basis.
Findings also showed that there are fears among maritime operators that MEND may internationalise its terror attacks based on its new premise of attacking both Nigerian and South African targets
Already, there is widespread belief within the maritime security sector that pirates are motivated by the increasing costs of petroleum in Nigeria with a London based club of ship owners differentiating Nigerian pirates from their Somali counterparts based on impatience with prolonged ransom negotiations.
The development is creating ripples in some Western capitals which depend on Nigeria and other Gulf oil nations as there are fears that uncontained piracy may led to further hike in oil prices
The United States, which currently relies on the Gulf of Guinea for fifteen per cent of its oil imports and whose reliance could increase to twenty per cent over the next five years, is eager to secure the supply route of the Gulf of Guinea.
A security brief from the new Africa Command indicated that the US military has begun joint training exercises with West African navies to “enhance regional and maritime security and safety by assisting African nations in developing proficiencies in areas such as maritime interdiction operations, search and rescue operations, counter-terrorism, and overfishing of African waters.”
To avoid fears over the establishment of American base on Nigerian soil, the joint training is held aboard US Navy ships, allowing the US to maintain a military presence in Africa, called an “Africa Partnership Station,” which was described as “more of a concept than a platform, and does not include a specific ship, unit, or aircraft.”
“Since APS is typically based aboard a ship, it does not leave a permanent footprint in Africa,” says an AFRICOM briefing paper, adding that “the ship functions as a mobile university, moving from port to port, fostering long-term relationships between the United States and international partners.”
Worried by the worsening situation in the Gulf of Guinea, the United Nations Security Council has also resolved to organise an international conference to fashion ways and means of containing the piracy menace.
Rising from its meeting this week, the UN released the report of its assessment mission which found that “the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic, especially for oil-producing countries that are frequently targeted for their high value petroleum assets.
The report noted that some countries expressed concern that some of the pirate attacks might also have political motivations, noting that “while some states had already responded at the highest level, the phenomenon caught most unprepared and national capacities are limited.”
Similarly, the mission found that the collective anti-piracy architecture deployed over the past three years is commendable but limited, citing the joint marine patrols by Nigeria and Benin as model for inter-state cooperation, but a temporary solution.
Source: The Tribune (www.tribune.com.ng)
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